Hit points (HP) represent how much damage a hero or object can take. The health bar shows the amount of HP, divided into bars each worth 25.
A hero's HP is "low" at 50% and "critical" at 25%. Their location will be shown to all friendly healers.
If a hero's HP becomes 35% or lower, a gasp sound effect is played and blood appears around the borders of the screen. The exception to this is 150 HP heroes who get it at 70 HP.
Priority Order
When being healed, the priority order is Health > Armor > Shields.
When taking damage, the priority order is Non-Recoverable HP (Shields > Armor) > Recoverable HP (Shields > Armor > Health). The only exception is EMP, which only damages shields and bypasses any temporary armor.
If there are shields above armor, and an instance of damage destroys the shields and damages the armor, armor will reduce that damage based on how much damage the armor would take. For example, suppose Wrecking Ball has 99 temporary shields from Adaptive Shield and he gets hit by Fire Strike (100 damage). The armor would take 1 damage, a number less than 6, so it reduces the damage by 0.5 instead of 3. Wrecking Ball takes 99.5 damage from the Fire Strike.
Recoverable HP
HP that can be healed. There are three types: health, armor, and shields.
Health
The most basic form of HP is health. Health is depleted when there is no armor or shields to protect it, and is the first to be replenished when being healed.
If a hero's health comes to 0, they will die (with the exception of D.Va while inside her mech).
Health is colored white.
Armor
Some heroes have a type of HP called armor. For every instance of damage, armor reduces the damage taken by 5, but if the damage is less than 6, armor takes away half instead. As such, armor is extremely effective against attacks that consist of multiple instances of damage (e.g. shotguns) and is less effective against single instances of damage that are above 6. Even if the armor runs out, as long as there was at least 1 point of armor before taking damage, the damage will be reduced.
Armor is the very last damage modifier to be applied. For example, if a fortified Orisa would take 100 damage, Fortify halves it to 50, then armor takes away another 3; the damage is 47. If she would take 10 damage, Fortify halves it to 5, then because 5 is less than 6, armor halves it again; the damage is 2.5.
Against beams and damage-over-time effects, armor works differently: armor reduces the damage of beams by 20% and does nothing against damage-over-time.
Armor is colored yellow.
- Beam-type damage (20% reduction)
- Mei: Endothermic Blaster (primary fire)
- Moira: Biotic Grasp (alternate fire), Coalescence
- Symmetra: Photon Projector (primary fire), Sentry Turret
- Winston: Tesla Cannon
- Zarya: Particle Cannon (primary fire)
- Damage-over-time effects (no reduction)
- Ana: Biotic Rifle
- Ashe: Dynamite
- Hanzo: Dragonstrike
- Mei: Blizzard
- Moira: Biotic Orb
- Torbjörn: Molten Core (also does additional damage to armor)
- Widowmaker: Venom Mine
- Zarya: Graviton Surge
Shields
Some heroes have a type of HP called shields. Symmetra's Teleporter also has shields. Barriers are made entirely of shields.[1][2]
On heroes and Symmetra's Teleporter, shields automatically regenerate at a rate of 30 shields per second after avoiding damage for 3 seconds. On Reinhardt's Barrier Field, Brigitte's Barrier Shield, and Sigma's Experimental Barrier, they regenerate at various rates after being inactive for 2 seconds.
Shields are destroyed by Sombra's EMP.
The regeneration of shields is treated as a form of healing, meaning Biotic Grenade can amplify or block it.
Shields are colored cyan.
Non-Recoverable HP
HP that cannot be healed and are only temporary, generated by hero abilities.
There are two types of non-recoverable HP: armor and shields. Non-recoverable HP always goes on top of recoverable HP.
Temporary Armor
Non-recoverable armor reduces damage like regular armor.
Temporary armor is colored orange.
Abilities that grant Temporary Armor:
- Repair Pack: Provides a target up to 75 temporary armor when over-healing. Lasts 5 seconds
- Rally: Provides self and nearby allies up to 100 temporary armor at a rate of 15 armor per 0.5 seconds. Lasts 30 seconds
- Overload: Provides self 100 temporary armor. Lasts 5 seconds
Temporary Shields
Non-recoverable shields, or temporary personal shields,[3][4][5][6] are susceptible to EMP like regular shields but do not regenerate and often decay by themselves.
Temporary shields are colored dark blue.
Abilities that grant Temporary Shields:
- The Best Defense...: Creates up to 150 temporary shields to self, 30 for each target hit with a normal ability and 75 for each target hit with Meteor Strike. Decays at 3 shields per second after 1 second
- Sound Barrier: Creates 750 temporary shields to self and all allies within range. Decays at 125 shields per second
- Kinetic Grasp: Converts 40% of damage absorbed into temporary shields. Decays at 7 shields per second after 3 seconds
- Adaptive Shield: Creates 100 temporary shields to self, plus 100 additional shields per enemy within range. Lasts 7 seconds. Does not give enemies ultimate charge if damaged
List of hero HP
Hero | Role | Health | Armor | Shields | Temporary Armor | Temporary Shields | Total / Max |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
D.Va | Tank |
400 | 200 | 600 [Mech] | |||
150 | 150 [Pilot] | ||||||
Orisa | Tank |
200 | 200 | 400 | |||
Reinhardt | Tank |
300 | 200 | 500 | |||
Roadhog | Tank |
600 | 600 | ||||
Sigma | Tank |
300 | 100 | 400 [Kinetic Grasp] | 400 / 800 | ||
Winston | Tank |
400 | 100 | 500 / 1000 | |||
900 [Primal Rage] | |||||||
Wrecking Ball | Tank |
500 | 100 |
800 [Adaptive Shield] |
600 / 1400 | ||
Zarya | Tank |
200 | 200 | 400 | |||
Ashe | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Bastion | Damage |
200 | 100 | 300 | |||
Doomfist | Damage |
250 |
150 [The Best Defense...] |
250 / 400 | |||
Genji | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Hanzo | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Junkrat | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
McCree | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Mei | Damage |
250 | 250 | ||||
Pharah | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Reaper | Damage |
250 | 250 | ||||
Soldier: 76 | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Sombra | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Symmetra | Damage |
100 | 100 | 200 | |||
Torbjörn | Damage |
200 | 50 | 100 [Overload] | 250 / 350 | ||
Tracer | Damage |
150 | 150 | ||||
Widowmaker | Damage |
200 | 200 | ||||
Ana | Support |
200 | 200 | ||||
Baptiste | Support |
200 | 200 | ||||
Brigitte | Support |
200 | 50 | 100 [Rally] | 250 / 350 | ||
Lúcio | Support |
200 | 750 [Sound Barrier] | 200 / 950 | |||
Mercy | Support |
200 | 200 | ||||
Moira | Support |
200 | 200 | ||||
Zenyatta | Support |
50 | 150 | 200 |
List of non-hero HP
Hero | Ability | Health | Armor | Shields | Total | Recoverability |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ashe | B.O.B. | 1200 | 1200 | Healing
Non-Recoverable HP | ||
Baptiste | Immortality Field | 200 | 200 | |||
Brigitte | Barrier Shield | 200 | 200 | Regenerates | ||
Junkrat | Concussion Mine | 25 | 25 | |||
Steel Trap | 100 | 100 | ||||
RIP-Tire | 100 | 100 | ||||
Mei | Ice Wall | 400 | 400 | |||
Orisa | Protective Barrier | 900 | 900 | |||
Supercharger | 200 | 200 | ||||
Reinhardt | Barrier Field | 2000 | 2000 | Regenerates | ||
Sigma | Experimental Barrier | 1500 | 1500 | Regenerates | ||
Sombra | Translocator | 5 | 5 | |||
Symmetra | Sentry Turret | 30 | 30 | |||
Teleporter | 50 | 250 | 300 | Regenerates | ||
Photon Barrier | 4000 | 4000 | ||||
Torbjörn | Deploy Turret | 250 | 250 | Forge Hammer | ||
Widowmaker | Venom Mine | 1 | 1 | |||
Winston | Barrier Projector | 700 | 700 | |||
Wrecking Ball | Minefield | 50 | 50 | |||
Zarya | Particle Barrier | 200 | 200 | |||
Projected Barrier | 200 | 200 |
Trivia
- If armor is hit, a metallic sound effect is played.
- If a hero's base shields are destroyed, the screen becomes cracked.
- The bleed effect originally occurred when a hero's HP became 75 or lower. Since this was highly inefficient for Tanks, it was replaced with a more relativistic system.
- Armor originally subtracted 5 damage and began halving at 10.
- Armor originally treated the tick rate of beams and damage-over-time effects as "instances" of damage. This resulted in some beam-damage and DoT being halved by armor. However, not all beams/DoT effects have the same tick rate, so how armor interacts with them were unpredictable.
- The priority order for damage was originally shields (non-recoverable, then recoverable), then armor (non-recoverable, then recoverable), and then health. This meant that the armor provided by Rally would go underneath the shields of heroes such as Zenyatta.
- The Patch Notes for Patch 1.33.0.1, which issued this change, mentions "non-recoverable health" when listing the new priority order.[7] Currently, such a concept does not exist in the game.
- Symmetra originally had an ability called Photon Shield which allowed her to create 25 recoverable shields for her teammates. When Symmetra got her first rework, Photon Shield was removed and Shield Generator was added, which gave all surrounding teammates 75 recoverable shields. This too was removed upon Symmetra's second rework. Photon Shield and Shield Generator were the only ways heroes could have recoverable HP that were not found on their base HP.
- B.O.B. is treated as an additional teammate, so he is affected by abilities that grant non-recoverable HP to allies, such as Sound Barrier and Rally. B.O.B. is the only non-hero that can have additional HP.
- The term "shields" is often informally used to refer to barriers.
- Since barriers have shields for their HP, anything that exclusively damages shields also damages barriers. Currently, the only ability that does that is EMP; however, in the beta, Pharah's Concussive Blast used to be able to do 700 damage to shields and barriers.
References
- ↑ Overwatch Beta Patch Notes – March 1, 2016 — The health on Winston's barrier is specifically called "Shield health"
- ↑ OVERWATCH PTR PATCH NOTES – SEPTEMBER 21, 2018 — The health on Brigitte's barrier is specifically called "Shield health"
- ↑ Doomfist - Heroes - Overwatch
- ↑ Wrecking Ball - Heroes - Overwatch
- ↑ In-game description of Doomfist's The Best Defense...
- ↑ In-game description of Wrecking Ball's Adaptive Shield
- ↑ Overwatch Patch Notes – FEBRUARY 19, 2019